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Zero emission buildings, efficiency and high performance

The ecological construction is now a worldwide tendency, with the maximum advantage of clean energy and a significant long term saving.

Bullit Center, Wisconsin.

Bearing in mind the idea to maximize energy efficiency using renewable sources, the real estate market begins to show the rise of zero emissions construction.This buildings, also known as Net-Zero by the Efficiency Building Institute in the United Estates, belong to a model of construction and real estate operations that don’t burn fossil fuel and cannot produce carbon emissions.

These models have a recovery time-span of 15 years and offer several vantage points when reducing energy consuption. This, in turn, is considered a sustaintability solution.The tendency is relation with the incorporation of modern buildings, which count with smart automatic complexities and function under the METASYS platform, as well as a geometric air conditioning system that employs high efficiency heat pumps.

This solutions decreased the energy consumption in some of the prototypes. iDeAs corporation , located in San Jose, California, was built as the firs Net-Zero building.

After this first exercise, chains of actions have been channeled for buildings to have ZEB (Net-Zero Energy Buildings) denominations, given to energy efficient constructions, which have a zero efficiency energy consumption since they manage to return it to the electric net of unused resources in their operation.

Katrina Managan, program manager of the Efficency Institute: “Despite the cost, the instruments in new technologies channelled to zero emissions, create a new investment model, that with time, generates better energy performance in the properties”.

Currently, according to US Energy Information Administration, 70 percent of the energy in a commercial building is destined to lighting and conditioning.

In the U.S. during the year 2000, the US Green Buildings Council, gave recognition to 3 buildings, due to the steps taken in the improuvment of energy efficency. According to this council, until June of last year, 11,510 edifications with a certification existed, of which 1,687 are latent buildings, 6,457 are new and 3,366 correspond to other type of real estate, such as schools.

Under this dynamic, presently one out of three commercial constructions in the north American market indicate LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design).By 2030 the United States will face the challenge of the neutrality in the use of carbon in buildings. Meanwhile, the European Union sets specific details for the energetic profficiency in commercial buildings.

Since 2011 a tendency toward grater actions destined to reduce energy consumption have been observed. In that year the U. S. government set the goal to dimish energy consumption by 28 percent within the next four years.

Under this dynamic, the General Services Administration has 35 projects under development while the Army has established a policy towards reaching the zero emissions goal.Meanwhile, in the commercial market it is expected that by 2030 the energy intensity of new buildings are reduced a 35%

Energy expenditure of a standard building in the U.S.A

Area

Percentage

Heating

36

Cooling

8

Ventilation

7

Water heating

8

Ilumination

21

Kitchen

3

Refrigeration

6

Office Equipment

1

Computers

2

Others

9

Source: U.S Energy Information Administration

65% of the energy in a average building is destined to lighting and conditioning

Gasto energético de edificio standard en E.U.A

Área

Efficency: Energy saved in ZEB is energy the building doesn´t have to produce. It’s operation is based in a methology of integrated systems to:

Charge reduction.

Efficency systems

Regenerative systems

Renewable systems

Necessary Integration of design and function: Zero Energy buildings reach better their objectives when all parts are involved, from the owners to the architects to the contractors, sharing a Zero Energy vision and collaborating along the design and construction process.

Renewable Energy: It generates in the spot, creating a high performance building, reducing losses in the net. The renewable energy systems achieve a high completion in the life of the building. The renewable energy systems placed strategically in a spot, give stability to others parts which may suffer detritions in the nets distribution.

Network connection make it possible: Seven of the eight ZEBs known in USA, trust the network connections to meet their annual energy balance.

Supervision y verification: Once the ZEB is in proper function, the careful verification and supervision of the systems are necessary to give support to other declarations of design and often, they help to identify and correct several systems that wouldn’t work appropriately or aren’t correctly build.